So what follows here is slightly unusual fare for this blog but it’s writing related and turned out to be a bit more of an interesting experiment than I initially thought. So . . . a few months back I was invited to play with a grammar checking tool and, for some reason I still don’t understand, imagined this would come complete with an extra day tucked into the week somewhere in which to play with it. Still, it was an interesting exercise in the end. Continue reading “Grammarly: A not-bad grammar checking tool (30/8/2013)”

It’s been an odd week. Back from holiday is always a weird feeling. Then one of our cats was missing when we got back and didn’t show up for a week ( by the end we were assuming he’d been hit by a car and died in a hedge – in actual fact, he’d taken to loitering around the back of the local steak restaurant where he was being fed scraps of steak and premium salmon, then been taken in by the restaurant owner, whose partner is a veterinary nurse and works at a pet spa. So while we were imagining him dying by the roadside, cold and in pain and alone, actually he was being bathed, cleaned, brushed, pampered and living on food I largely can’t afford to eat myself . You really couldn’t make this shit up. He’s not entirely pleased to be back). And in the midst of that, there was the final death-rattle of my stupid pleurisy thing from earlier in the summer, which largely consisted of “you’re fine, go away, there categorically never was anything to this more than random infection and your chances of randomly dropping dead are not severely inflated as was initially posited but in fact exactly the same as they ever were,” which turned out more of a relief than I’d expected.

In the middle of that, some writing happened, some of which involved getting stroppy with my Empires co-writer on account of me being stressed about lots of other things. If we’re still talking to each other by the end of this, we really should do a panel on co-operative writing. Anyway, there’s another draft of Empires: Extraction now and this one doesn’t turn into an 18-rated version of Transformers in the middle. And I polished off the first of two Bulldog Drummond novellas, of which I’ll say more later.

This week’s book giveaway is a mystery. I have a number of books available but I’m not going to tell you what they are. Comment here saying what book you’d like to get and I’ll pick someone at random and see if either I have it or Gollancz can spare a copy (hint – pick a Gollancz title…). You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll count the first and if everyone asks for the Republic of Thieves, I’d point out that IT’S NOT OUT YET. And I’ll sulk.

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far.

If you’re still here, last week said I’d put up some photos. Here are some photos:

Last week I was on holiday and did like ALMOST NO WORK AT ALL. Almost. I’ll put some photos up and maybe some words at some point about our time in Jordan but it’s too soon right now except to say that the country is lovely, the people are friendly and it’s basically the Switzerland of the Middle East. It might be surrounded by Bad Shit right now but there’s no sign of it crossing the borders that I could see. Maybe it’s because they don’t have any oil to fight over.

This week’s book giveaway is Terra by Mitch Benn. First reviews off google are here and here. I haven’t read it myself (comic SF not really my thing – I tried to read Hitchhiker again recently and it ^h^h I’ll just not say anything).

Anyway, I have a signed copy to give away courtesy of Gollancz. Usual deal – comment on this post before August 24th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series.

This week we’re playing SF Supermarket. So you need your comment to come up with something to do with SF and the comments have to be in alphabetical order. So for example, A is for Android, B is for Bloody Hell, Lasers Are Not Visible In A Vacuum, etc… You get the picture. If you don’t play the game, your entry is VOID. HAHAHAHAHAAAAA.

Anyway, to enter the competition, you have to play the game. You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll count the first two entries – the rest are just for fun and showing off. Extra points for humour and originality and just for once I’ll throw in an Angry Dragons mug if you make me laugh, smirk or otherwise amuse me.

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far.

Another week and so far I appear to be not dead and, in fact, largely better. The last couple of weeks have been spent largely on SF stuff again. There’s now a whole first draft for Empires: Extraction (working title) which may need reining in a little as I appear to have gone Michael Bay all over Docklands, Limehouse and parts of the City. Never mind, eh? The last few days have been spent making further revisions to the sekkrit project which is due for submission at the end of the month. I’m told I can talk about it next month. Otherwise I’ve been working on a Bulldog Drummond novella (see last week’s announcement), a good chunk of which is set in Docklands, Limehouse and parts of the City. This is confusing. The same pub, for example, appears in both. Captain Drummond keeps getting strange flash-forwards of the scenery of East London a hundred years in the future, ravaged by nuclear fire…

Cold Redemption (Gallow book 2) comes out on Thursday. Dragon Queen comes out in less than two weeks now and I have a few copies, a tiny precious few. Dragon Queen is my attempt to keep all the good stuff from the first series but with vastly more world building and character depth (hopefully sort of like The Black Mausoleum). So it’s not going to be quite the relentlessly fast roller-coaster of The Adamantine Palace but on the other hand you do get an entire last act that should read like Call of Duty: Dragon Warfare if I’ve done it right. There are some tasters here and here and I’ll put up another one on Thursday – and hereit is. . .

You wanted to know more about the Taiytakei: here they are. And possibly they just made a very big mistake.

I have two copies to give away. One here and one on Twitter. Usual deal – comment on this post before August 10th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series.

This week we’re playing Dragon Supermarket. So you need your comment to come up with something to do with fire and dragons and the comments have to be in alphabetical order. So for example, A is for Absolutely Run Like Fuck When You See One, B is for Burn, etc…

Anyway, to enter the competition, you have to play the game. You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll count the first two entries – the rest are just for fun and showing off. Extra points for humour and originality and just for once I’ll throw in an Angry Dragons mug if you make me laugh, smirk or otherwise amuse me.

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far.

I can announce that I’ve signed a contract with Piqwiq, part of the Rushforth Media Group, to write two Bulldog Drummond novellas this year. I expect to fit these in quite comfortably around existing commitments, probably one before and one after the edit to The Splintered Gods which will start as soon as the school holidays end.

For those who don’t know, the character of Bulldog Drummond was created shortly after the first world war by Herman McNeile and is the subject of over a dozen short novels and a similar number of movies between the first and second world wars. Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond is de-mobbed army Captain. Finding himself at a loose end after the war, he embarks on a life of what can best be described as freelance adventure.

His early stories frequently involved an arch-nemesis Carl Petersen (who definitely has shades of Moriarty to him). The two stories I’ll be writing are set slightly later, leaving me with the fun of creating a new arch-nemesis, Mister Crabbleston. The first story will definitely revolve around a daring robbery of the Bank of England that’s only the start of something far more sinister. Not sure about the second one yet, mostly because I’m a bit spoiled for choice.

The character of Bulldog Drummond was one of the inspirations behind James Bond; so think a freelance nineteen-twenties James Bond, dabble with a little Indiana Jones while you’re at it, and that’s what I’m aiming for.

I’m aware, before anyone points it out, of issues of racism and facism around the original character. I’ve not studied the source material enough to form an opinion of my own as to how it stands compared to the general attitudes of its time; nevertheless, the general attitudes of its time don’t really need to be brought to a modern audience. I might keep a faint sense of hopefully rather ironic jingoism but otherwise we’ll be leaving all that nonsense behind, ta.